Palin Uses Jury Duty to Get Out of Bus Tour

By Elspeth Reeve

On Wednesday morning, Real Clear Politics reported that Sarah Palin's much-hyped bus tour of states that just happened to host the earliest primary votes has been delayed indefinitely. The roadtrip was seen as evidence she was running for president after all, and its apparent cancellation was taken as a sign she wasn't. Wednesday evening, Sarah Palin denied the tour was spiked in a Facebook note titled "*Sigh* Reports of Tour Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated." Why was her trip through Iowa and South Carolina postponed? Palin says she has jury duty.

As I said myself at the end of the east coast leg of the tour, the summer is long, and I’m looking forward to hitting the open road again. The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan. ...

The next leg of the tour continues when the time comes. In the meantime, no one should jump to conclusions--certainly not the media with their long track record of getting things wrong or just making things up.

For what it's worth, Palin has canceled a trip to the Sudan to mark the southern part of the country's independence, The Washington Post's Amy Gardner reports, this one for scheduling reasons. But back to that jury duty excuse: Could this be the first time in American history that jury duty is being used to get out of some prior obligation, instead of the other way around? As the old saying goes, a jury is made up of 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty. And one of the best ways to get out of jury duty, Mental Floss notes, is to be famous. In 2003, former President Bill Clinton was called in to a Manhattan court as Prospective Juror No. 142. Where his juror questionnaire asked if he could be fair and impartial, Clinton answered yes, despite "unusual experience with the O.I.C."--the Office of Independent Counsel. The judge eventually dismissed Clinton because, she said, "To have Juror 142 here, with Secret Service protection... is to, it seems to me, undermine our efforts to keep the case focused quietly on the evidence.''

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